“The sand we thought was swept away just moved offshore. The waves have slowly moved much of that sand back to shore,” said Dan Bates, deputy director of the county’s Department of Environmental Resources Management.

The Category 4 storm that skirted the coast on Oct. 6 exposed limestone at Coral Cove Park in Tequesta. Winds carved six- to 10-foot dropoffs in the beach just south of the Jupiter Civic Center. Waves lapped the ocean side of the wooden walkovers along dog beach. Dunes were swept away at Singer Island.

Recommended for you

Most read

The $18 million plan now calls for hiring a dredge boat that will anchor offshore between the Jupiter Inlet and Town Center in Juno Beach. The dredge will pump about 2 million cubic yards of sand through pipes onto the beach.

Backhoes will spread the sand to widen and raise the height of the beach. The work must be done between Nov. 1 and Feb. 28 to protect nesting sea turtles.

How much is 2 million cubic yards of sand?

Figuring a dump truck holds about 18 cubic yards, that means it would take about 110,000 trips along Indiantown and Donald Ross roads to deliver the sand from mines near Lake Okeechobee. If the trucks worked every day for four months , that would be about 900 trips a day. That’s about 40 trucks per hour — if they ran 24 hours a day.

Trucking sand is fine for smaller jobs, like the current one underway to haul 50,000 cubic yards of sand for dune restoration to Singer Island. The $1.3 million job is expected to be done by Feb. 28.

While dredging sand costs about half as much as trucking, the upfront costs of hiring a dredge boat are high. That’s why dredging is used for big jobs and trucking for smaller ones. Palm Beach County spends about $13 million annually building up and maintaining beaches, Bates said.

“The new (Juno/Jupiter) beach should last 10 years,” Bates said.

Not all of north county’s beaches were pounded by Matthew.

Erosion was not extensive directly north of the Juno Beach fishing pier, said county lifeguard Josh Davis. The combination of continuing surges from recent king tides and big waves from Matthew created a constantly changing dynamic to the north county shoreline.